In season of Blazers' rebirth, award bestowed on Schonely stands for something more

Jamie Francis/The OregonianFormer Blazers broadcaster Bill Schonely makes the rounds before one of the Blazers' last regular-season home games. Everywhere he goes, he's greeted by fans. Here he poses before the game with Anya Rozek, 7, of Bend and her cousin, Adrienne Perkins of Portland at a restaurant called Schonely's Place inside the Rose Garden.

On the last night of the NBA's regular season, a little more than two hours before the Trail Blazers and Denver Nuggets tip off, Bill Schonely walks out of the Rose Garden's media room.

First, he stops to trade game predictions with Charlie, an employee stationed outside the doors. From there, Schonely and his wife, Dottie, make their way to a freight elevator, where they board with more employees.

"How's everyone feeling tonight?" Schonely asks.

"Feel like winners," a woman says. Schonely smiles.

The doors open on the Lexus Club Level, featuring luxurious corporate-sponsored lounges no one ever would have considered in 1970, when Schonely went on the radio to broadcast the Blazers' first game.

He stops to talk to another employee, and makes it a few feet before stopping again, and then again, before reaching the Rose Room where his dinner table is reserved and he enthusiastically greets the bartender.

When Schonely is presented with the Portland First Citizen Award by The Portland Metropolitan Association of Realtors on Thursday, it'll be another well-earned honor. He spent 28 years behind that microphone describing 2,522 games. In 2002, he was inducted into the Oregon Sports Hall of Fame. He invented Rip City.

He's worked tirelessly on behalf of charities such as the American Heart Association, Life Flight and the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. He's on the board of the Providence Child Center Foundation.

All of that is more than enough to justify giving Schonely, who will turn 80 on June 1, this 81-year-old honor bestowed on a civic or business leader.

But trailing Schonely around the Rose Garden, you can make a case for the award on behalf of something more... for what he represents.

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There is a quote that tells so much of the Blazers' story -- good and bad; past, present and future.

In 1998, the Los Angeles Lakers eliminated Portland from the playoffs and ended Schonely's career calling Blazers games. This did not happen by his own hand. The Blazers made the decision to hire a new voice. Schonely didn't want to leave the microphone.

Petitions were signed. Hundreds of letters detailing what Schonely meant to radio listeners and Blazers fans came in to this newspaper.

On that final night, Harry Hutt, then the team's senior vice president of marketing, the man who made the decision, was asked if removing Schonely was a smart move given the team's growing image problem.

"We don't have an image problem," Hutt said, "we have a connection problem."

Logic would have dictated not disconnecting the one man who connected so forcefully for so long.

But that was the story that night, and it only got worse.

FileIn November 2003, the Trail Blazers honored Bill Schonely at half-time during their game with the Philadelphia 76ers. On the night his name was raised to the Rose Garden's rafters, only 16,218 were announced in the building that seats 19,980, and by the end of the game Rasheed Wallace and Zach Randolph were yelling at them.

In November 2003, when Schonely had his mic retired and his name raised to the Rose Garden's rafters, only 16,218 were announced in the building that seats 19,980, and by the end of the game Rasheed Wallace and Zach Randolph were yelling at them. Bonzi Wells offered the fans a more silent, but universally recognized, rebuttal.

A dignified man honored on an undignified night.

The connection was lost, with the city, with the fans -- though Schonely never stopped loving the Trail Blazers, and never stopped wanting, and waiting for the return of Rip City.

As you might have heard, it's back.

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Before the regular season's penultimate home game, when Schonely took the mic to sing "America the Beautiful," his shirt, as always, was crisp as his diction. His cuffs monogrammed. His suit pressed, the red pocket square matched his tie. His hair perfect.

Two nights later, he humbly collects compliments for his performance. The guy loves to sing. And the people around the Rose Garden love to hear his voice, any way they can.

That night, as he enters the media room, he carries a news story printed off the Internet, "Schonz" written in black marker across the top.

Les Keiter, a 50-year veteran behind the microphone who had once spent three seasons re-creating San Francisco Giants games from a studio in Manhattan after the Giants moved West, had died the day before. The printout is his obituary. Keiter died the day after Harry Kalas, the voice of the Philadelphia Phillies died.

What those men, and Schonely, and so many others in so many cities did was ... connect. Night after night, with voices welcomed into homes to tell stories -- "wherever you may be," as Schonely famously said.

A voice is a personal thing, much more so than words on a page, or images on a television.

And that's how Schonely -- whose official title these days is founding broadcaster/
ambassador -- connects, still. In a way perhaps no one ever will again in this town.

He's the team's past, a proud member of its present and hopeful for its future. On his right hand he wears that championship ring from 1977, and he says he plans on hanging around until he sees title No.2.

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Dinner finished, it's time to inch a little closer toward Schonely's final destination on this night, the seat a few rows up behind the baseline where he'll later watch the Blazers destroy the Nuggets, hearing his own voice blasted as part of the production.

"Rip City, baby!"

But first, it's down to the main concourse and the Pyramid Tap Room at Schonely's Place. That means another walk.

He stops to talk with a few more employees and some fans. He's stopped constantly. It's no one group. His admirers are young, old, men, women.

Everyone.

A man approaches, hand outstretched, and says his father recently died, and when the games began airing on TV, they always turned down the sound and turned up the radio.

"You just made my year," another fan, in a Blazers jersey, says. "I got to shake your hand."

That man, Dean Zimel, is a 49-year-old whose family has had season tickets since the Blazers' second season. In Memorial Coliseum, they were section 68, row F, seats 1 through 4. That's a fan.